


I Didn't Mean To (Come Undone)

by ShadowsLament



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-08 03:14:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11637759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: Tony realizes a few things about Peter. But about the clutter of origami spiders let loose in his lab...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place a couple of years after Homecoming.

Tony could fathom a world in which he did not act accordingly or true to type. He absolutely could. More to the point, if some intrepid so-and-so went looking for that dim planet, he could save that person a great deal of time and trouble: Top shelf, third bookcase from the left, shoved in with the other science fiction novels that he, as a kid doing his level best to dodge bedtime, used to prop open against a pillow.

Fiction was fine, but the fact of the matter happened to be sitting opposite of Tony at a comically small table, and he was finer.

Peter had turned up with damp hair curled like inverted waves--Hokusai’s, darkened--over his forehead. The blazer that closely resembled Tony’s second least favorite condiment had been pulled on over skin, and what’s more, Peter let his fine motor skills fuck off for the morning and didn’t do the decent thing with a single button.

The days of attempting to accomplish seven indecent things before breakfast were in his admittedly checkered past, but Tony would never be allowed to forget his standards, and the pale range of Peter’s exposed abdominal, the scythe cut of his hip, surged over the line.

Snagging his spoon before it got swiped along with his bowl, Tony watched Peter grab a spoon of his own, dump his Whatever Puffs and a quarter of the bottle of milk over Tony’s granola and the dozen or so thin slices of banana beneath. Peter bit into one of those and grimaced. 

If pressed, Tony would deny ever being disarmed by a scrunched nose.

“What’d I do?” Peter asked, clued in, finally, to Tony’s undivided attention. “Miss some toothpaste or--”

“Now that you mention it,” Tony said, skimming his thumb over to the corner of Peter’s mouth, “no, you’re fine. Eat up.” 

It might have been Tony’s imagination or the kid’s breath might have one hundred percent hitched. Either way, Peter blinked. Twice. 

“Ah, okay, well, thanks for letting me crash here last night.”

Tony’s memory of the previous evening was unfortunately vague, an inconvenience he would have blamed on a copious amount of booze, except not a drop was involved. What came back to him, without an assist from any of his tech, was an honest-to-God paper stack of half-finished schematics, an empty coffee carafe, zero espresso beans in any of the cabinets he’d searched, a broken French press, mismatched socks, a demolished box of donuts, and the first _Hobbit_ movie. 

He was certain, to a reasonable degree, that at least two of those items were not like the others and had nothing to do with him.

“Were you wearing an Iron Man sock?” Tony asked. “And the other one. Little spiders? Web on the heel?”

Peter took a minute or three to swallow a spoonful of cereal. “Yeah? I mean, one pair was a gift from May. Sort of, um, a joke. But I saw the other and...” 

There was no mistaking the blush Peter wore like watercolors on his cheeks and chest. That particular light and lovely shade, Tony had observed it before in expertly lit galleries, in the sky when sleep wasn’t a thing, but never, not ever, in his kitchen or in one of his cars or in his bed. 

He pushed away from the table. Too fast, maybe, if the balletic leap Peter’s eyebrows took towards his hairline was any indication. Couldn’t do a thing about that misstep, but his actual steps, those he could slow down on his way to the counter to snag a coffee cup. While he was there, rummaging through cabinets and drawers for a bag of grounds he was not going to find, he could work on his heart beat, shake off the suddenly erratic rhythm.

Sure, and while he was at it he could whip up a plan to get pigs airborne without a fucking rocket swallowing the thing in straps and steam. Unless Peter wanted bacon, then--Tony, shaking his head, flicked the empty cup. “I slept like shit. You?”

“Good. Great, actually. Your bed--the one you put me in--let me use--was insanely comfortable.” That blush deepened, they both knew it, chose to ignore it. “I knocked out pretty quick, missed the last hour of the movie.”

“The Hobbit. That was you.” Tony crossed it off the list. “So the donuts were mine.”

“Ours,” Peter corrected, frowning. “How long have you been working on those schematics?”

“They were on paper, Peter.”

“Right, and--”

“I couldn’t find a pen,” Tony said. “We’re talking six hours later and the best I could do was a golf pencil, about which there are two things I don’t want to know. One, who mistook it for a chew toy. And two--” Pausing to think, certain the other quibble was nailed to the back of his brain, probably behind the sharp realization that Peter had grown into the very precise angle of his jaw, Tony finally waved a hand through stifling hot air. “It was mostly just the one. Hey, did you fiddle with the air conditioning?”

Peter pointed to the goosebumps decorating his collarbone. “That would be a no.” The kid frowned again, his eyes narrowing. “If I’m in the way or something, just--”

“You’re not, no,” Tony said, and with frankly alarming haste. In his defense, the unexpected and bruising desire to touch something out of reach was messing with each and every one of his body’s natural systems. “Here’s an idea. Let’s watch that movie. The hour you missed.”

“Really?”

Didn’t matter how many years of study Tony put into the project, he would never figure out how Peter could light up like that, his smile so wide and genuine. Even the laugh lines around Peter’s distractingly warm and deeply brown eyes were eager and willing. 

Christ, he was going to need a minute. 

“You bet,” Tony said. “You could do me a favor--”

“Anything.” Peter stood, quickly, his trousers slipping that much lower. And there was no way, no possible way, the kid was wearing boxers, briefs, boxer briefs, or any other mash-up of underwear. Tony filed that little gut-puncher of a tidbit next to a mental note to schedule a doctor’s appointment first chance he got. His last physical should have turned up any obvious balance issues, but clearly there’d been some negligence there that needed to be addressed. “Tony?”

His eyes snapped up to Peter’s face. “What’s that?”

“You wanted me to--”

“Put on a shirt, kid,” Tony said, snatching the milk to return it to the fridge. “Going out on a limb here, but my guess is you’d prefer I stay awake to see Thorin and company give the Great Goblin the slip. For that we’re going to need coffee. Just, I don’t know, buy out that cutesy cafe on the corner. And maybe pick up some donuts. I only have your word for it that the ones from before were ours.”

“Seriously?” Peter said, backing out of the kitchen. “You practically ravished the Boston creams. All six of them.”

“What does a nice kid like you know about ravishment, huh?” Tony called after him.

It was faint, but Peter’s muttered answer was decidedly, “More than you evidently think.”

“More than I—Peter? Peter!”

Tony considered calling, texting, ordering up a jet to trail a banner, but instead rubbed a hand over his jaw. He glared at the bowl Peter had commandeered, willing an object devoid of sentience to give up information Tony really would have liked to have had yesterday, possibly the day before that, or, better yet, prior to the actual day—days?--of ravishment.

“Let’s say I knew. Before.”

He forced a deep breath. Peter had left the cereal box open; Tony could smell the sugar beneath the paperboard.

“Then what?” he asked the wall, gleaming white, a literal blank slate. “I fling a box of condoms and lube at him? A tablet loaded up with instructional and/or aspirational porn? Tell him sex is infinitely better with a partner you trust, and that he should reconsider, because I—“

Yanking over a chair, Tony sat down.

Because he what, exactly?

“Mr. Stark, I’ve got more sche—Mr. Stark?” Happy asked, pressing the long, narrow box under one arm closer to his side. His tie’s knot was loose. Slightly askew. “Everything all right?”

“Dandy,” Tony said, standing, shoving the chair back where it belonged. Mostly. “Peter, did he--”

“Yeah, and on the way out, asked how I took my coffee. You know,” Happy began, “you really gotta cut back on that stuff. You and Parker both. It’s going to--”

“Let me tell you what it’s not going to do,” Tony said. “Stunt Peter’s growth.” He picked up the bowl, the spoon’s handle steadied beneath his thumb, and took it to leave in the sink. “What’s with the box? Didn’t I tell you blow-up dolls aren’t a substitute--”

“We are not having that conversation again.” Happy tugged on his tie. “Schematics. They were delivered late last night.”

Tony sighed. “More paper?”

“More paper,” Happy confirmed, and Tony really didn’t care for the number of teeth bared by the man’s grin. “You want ‘em in the lab or—“

“A dumpster would be preferable,” Tony said. “Outside of that option, yeah, sure.”

Happy nodded and took off, clinging to the box, whistling a song that bounced like a ping pong ball down the corridor.

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and, nope, that was no good: He saw Peter as clear as the proverbial day. Those notches in his eyebrows. The pronounced peaks that made up his mouth's cupid's bow. The span of his shoulders and length of his hands. And, for fuck’s sake, when did he begin to notice any of it?

His watch informed him the kid was clocking twenty minutes out of Tony’s space, which was simultaneously not enough and too much, and--

“It took me so long because the owner brought in her pit bull. Couldn’t leave without saying hi.”

Startled, Tony yanked on the watch’s strap. Black nylon bit into his skin. “Speak of the devil and—”

Peter moved closer. Just a step. “You were thinking about me?”

“Daredevil.” Tony made an unsuccessful grab for the cardboard carrier in Peter’s hand. “There’s a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen that makes a delightful sfogliatella. You should try it some time.”

“I will,” Peter said. “When would be good for you?”

“Obviously,” Tony said, on his way out the door, “not right now. Movies to watch. Donuts to eat. You smell like cinnamon, by the way.”

Peter trailed in Tony’s wake. So near, Tony picked up the other scents he wore over his purloined Stark Industries T-shirt: coffee, recently ground; more sugar, like icing on a four tier cake; and a bit of coconut, likely from the soap Peter had found in the bathroom. “Scratch that,” Tony said. “You’re a walking patisserie. So where’s my coffee?”

“Here,” Peter said, offering the carrier, minus a cup. “It cost me one lecture from Happy on the detrimental effects of caffeine.” He looked at Tony, dark eyes touching on the plastic lid where it pressed against Tony’s mouth. “Worth it.”

“Look, Peter,” Tony said, because Peter’s voice had gone soft as his smile when he saw a dog on the street, and speaking was the safer option of the two that came immediately to Tony’s mind. For the moment, at--

”Did you hear that?” Tony cocked his head, and yeah, there was a muffled popping sound, like half a dozen bang snaps stepped on in quick succession. “What the fuck?”

Peter didn’t hazard a guess but took off at a sprint for the lab.


	2. Chapter 2

“What I’m going to need,” Tony said, from where he was crouched down on his haunches in the middle of the lab, “is for someone to provide me with the date-the exact moment in time-Rowling signed on to write my bio.”

Peter crossed over to the drafting table. Surrounded by empty coffee cups and copper wire wound like storm clouds on Doppler radar, a long cardboard box was scarred by dozens of ragged holes punched from the inside out. A paper-white spider skittered from the box to the edge of the table. Peter held out his hand, palm up. “I think that’d be about five minutes ago.”

“If I didn’t know better,” Tony said, standing, staring at a wall speckled with small white bodies, “I’d swear—”

“Someone animated origami.” The spider circling Peter’s wrist moved to perch on the back of his hand. Creases on the body and where each segment of leg met the next were subtle but visible. And the thing was smooth, not a hint of trichobothria tickling his skin. Where it should have had several pairs of eyes, it had none. The others scattered around the room looked the same, varying slightly in size, and their number was high. Ridiculously high. “A lot of origami.”

Tony joined Peter at the table, picked up the box. “What do we think? Surveillance?”

A camera might be viable, but without analyzing the material the spiders were constructed from, a recording device was the more likely possibility. Still—“I think it’s hollow,” Peter offered. “And empty.”

After a seconds-long consideration of the spider balancing near Peter’s elbow, Tony nodded. “Scratching that idea for now. Why, then, fill the lab with spiders that are, one, apparently benign, and, two, might be the product of a hobbyist with easy access to a Hammermill warehouse and an axe to grind against moderation?”

“To see if they could?”

“That,” Tony pointed at Peter, “is actually not unreasonable. On a scale of—”

“Are we breeding spiders now? Really? Look, I didn’t bat an eye when you decided to—“

“You,” Tony interrupted, rounding on Happy. “You brought in the box.”

Happy frowned. “Box? What box?”

Tony angled the one in question to show off the damage. “Did you scan it? Run a check on—“

“Procedure was followed.” Happy glanced down at the pair of spiders on his shoe, swallowed, and resolutely returned an adamant stare to Tony’s face. “To the letter.”

“I want everything that has anything to do with the delivery. Get me boxes, not cardboard. Brooms, dustpans, whatever’s been shoved in the supply closet. And give Peter a ride home.” 

“ _What_?” Peter asked, his voice half an octave too high for comfort. “Why? I can—”

“Help? Yeah, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. At home. Bring your new best friend with you. See what you can see.” Tony put a hand on each shoulder to steer Peter towards the door. The touch was brief. Peter felt it along his spine, to the tips of his fingers, to his toes. “Call me if you see something good, or, better, something interesting. I’ll do the same.”

“Here.” Happy held Peter’s backpack and a plastic shopping bag stretched around three bakery boxes. Two were filled with donuts, the third with a couple of cinnamon rolls larger than Peter’s fist. Happy passed the plastic bag to Tony then tossed Peter’s backpack in his general direction. “Let’s go.”

“But—”

“He has his reasons,” Happy said, ushering Peter down the hall. “They may not make sense to even one other person, and you can disagree with them all you like—”

“I know,” Peter sighed. “I just...I could be more help here.”

“Nah.” Happy gestured to the spider fastened to Peter’s forearm. “None of ‘em bonded to Mr. Stark like that. Doesn’t matter where you’re at with it, you’ll figure something out.”

Peter climbed in the car parked out front and slouched down on the backseat, settling the spider on his knee. The smaller of its legs was slightly bent, like someone became impatient and rushed the fold. Happy pulled away from the curb, but Peter focused on that crease, sharper than the rest. After a while he turned to the window. Buildings and scaffolding blurred into one misshapen unit. Strangers became couples holding hands. Peter looked up at the telephone wires, crossed like the strands of his webs.

Sitting across from Tony in the kitchen, he had thought for sure that Tony—

“Hey, kid,” Happy said, with a glance in the rearview mirror. “You need to stop anywhere? Pick anything up?”

Peter shook his head. “Thanks, though.”

“No problem. And Parker,” Happy pulled up to another curb, miles away from where either of them wanted to be, “I hope your time is well spent with your new friend.” 

Peter slid out of the car, fumbling his hold on the backpack, on the spider, on his depthless desire to be close to Tony.

He waited until Happy had eased back into traffic to trudge up the stairs, relief at May’s absence prompting a pang of guilt that would have to wait. Shutting the door to his room, he dropped his stuff on the bed and sat on the floor with the spider cupped in both hands. His sneaker drummed against a box that hadn’t been there the day before.

 

“You’re not actually origami,” Peter drew a fingertip down the center of the body, wide as a quarter, “are you?”

The spider climbed to the heel of his palm.

“Don’t think about hurting it,” Peter mumbled, pinching two of its legs between three fingers on either hand. “It’s not real.”

It couldn’t be. Right?

“I have to,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

He pulled on the legs, hard. And they didn’t tear. He turned the spider around and over; no matter the angle, it showed no signs of strain, no variation to the existing creases. There’d been a sound, though: the distinct rustle of paper. Clambering over on his knees, he pushed through the detritus on his desk until he had the scissors. He didn’t think about it as he positioned a leg between the blades, as he applied pressure, and more pressure, and nothing was happening. 

“Shit.”

Peter tossed the scissors aside. 

Forty minutes after he had dragged in May’s shredder, tried three different lighters, gone through an entire matchbox, submerged it in hot and cold water, doused it in rubbing alcohol and orange juice, the spider was dry and intact, crawling up the side of the box he’d shoved against the wall. 

“I am not putting on the suit for this.”

Imagining Tony in the armor, turning the repulsors on the clutter of spiders in the lab, Peter checked his phone for the sixteenth time. “At least his luck hasn’t been any better.”

He thought of calling anyway, if only to find out what methods and equipment Tony had tried on his samples, when the spider crested the box’s open flap and fell inside.

“Great,” he huffed, and knelt down in front of the side that was labeled, simply, _Peter’s_. A small trophy, won at an elementary school science fair, rested on top of the pile. The threadbare dish towel it was wrapped in retained the faint scent of Pine-Sol. He put both on the floor to rummage through the rest. “I didn’t bring you home to play hide-and-seek.”

The floor quickly became a mess of board games in bent or broken boxes, notebooks covered in NASA stickers and doodled dinosaurs, a baseball cradled in a catcher’s mitt he could remember using only once or twice, a stuffed spaniel with matted ears, a couple of Star Wars figures, a white pawn, and books. Stacks of picture books, pitted board books, biographies of Stephen Hawking and Ada Lovelace, an oversized history of the JPL, and several chapter books, slim stories about the adventures of astronauts and Iron Man.

At the bottom of the box, the spider stood still on the faded cover of _Dorrie and the Blue Witch_.

Peter flipped through the pages. A black cat trailed behind a little girl wearing one stripped sock, one solid, a hat and shoes that curled where they sharpened to a point, and, when she was flying around on her broom, a cape. It was pretty adorable. And not his. “So it’s a hint? You’re hinting now?”

He looked at the spider and, even without eyes, it was definitely staring back.

“Not tech. Magic,” he said, turning the thought over, coming up empty on ways to counter the effect. “You know I can’t exactly send Scarlet Witch a text, right? She’s not really speaking to Tony, either.” He picked up the spider, shrugged, and tried, “Alohomora.”

Nothing.

“Abracadabra.”

The spider didn’t twitch.

“Open sesame?” His hand tingled with pins and needles. Laughing, he said, “Seriously? That’s all it—”

The sensation intensified to the kind of pain inflicted by an open flame. By a five-alarm fire. His hand shook; he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it. There was the same noise as before, only louder, so much louder, like a stationery store had been sucked into the path of a tornado. Thousands of sheets of paper scattering, shredding. The spider spun on his palm, revolutions too quick to count, the body and legs contracting, expanding.

“Any time now,” he managed through gritted teeth, “feel free to—“

A deafening pop rattled the windows and the air thinned, a version of the Big Bang recreated in his way too small room, before everything-the sound, the spinning, the pain-stopped.

A single piece of paper, letter size, white as winter’s first snowfall, fluttered to the floor.

It would have been blank if not for the two words strictly aligned in the center.

Peter almost dropped his phone when it vibrated, suddenly, Tony’s picture filling the display. “Tony, it—”

“Yeah, I see it.” Tony’s voice was tight. “Happy’s coming to you. Throw some clothes in a bag. You’ll be staying here until we get this sorted.”

“May’s not home. I can’t just—“

“Leave a note. Call her from the car. Send her a fucking singing telegram if it would ease your mind. Just—” Tony abruptly inhaled, long and deep. When he spoke again the words were quiet. Contained. “I’ll take care of it, okay? Be careful, Peter. Please.”

“I am,” Peter said. “I will be. I promise.”

Shoving the phone in his pocket, he gathered up jeans and T-shirts, a hoodie, and his wallet. The paper from the floor was folded, tucked inside the pages of _Dorrie_ , and shoved in his backpack with the rest of his stuff. He went through the bathroom, taking a few things from the shelf above the sink, and stopped in the kitchen to scribble a note for May on the back of a receipt.

By the time he hit the sidewalk, Happy was already there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved reading the comments on the first chapter! It's no lie that kudos/comments are excellent motivators. Thanks for coming back for this chapter; I hope you'll stay with me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those of you who read this chapter before I took it down: Thank you for leaving those lovely comments. It was nagging at me that I could do a little better than I had, so...

Tony watched, carefully, as Peter’s gaze slid over the carpet of paper on the floor to the two or three reams stacked in the sink like so many dishes. Dozens of sheets had stuck to the walls, to the ceiling, without a trace of adhesive. A targeted taunt Tony would take immense pleasure in shoving down someone’s throat. 

“All of them say my name?”

“That,” Tony said, tugging lightly on the short sleeve of Peter’s shirt, skimming his knuckle down a superbly formed bicep, selfishly, because he wanted the memory of Peter’s skin, but more than that, more than anything, because the stricken expression Peter wore was infinitely worse than any beating Tony had ever taken and it had to go, “and then there’s this.”

On the drafting table, five sheets of paper, each bearing a single line of text, overlapped to form a vertical banner. He had to hand it to the would-be Yoshizawa: Those spiders of his-or hers, let it never be said-had brought Tony to his knees. Crawling across the floor, desperation flaring like a torch behind his breastbone, he had turned over sheet after sheet after fucking sheet searching for a piece of paper with another line in bold black ink, in a generic twenty-two point font. 

The deep breath he took wanted to jam in his throat, to make speech impossible, but he cleared it quickly, and read, “Little Peter Parker’s story turned so much darker—”

“Bit by a spider, now a lonely little fighter,” Peter finished, “oh, how his life has changed.”

“I always knew Miss Muffet would give someone the wrong idea,” Tony said, and goddamn, he could have cringed the moment the words were out, hovering lamely in the air. “Forget that.” He was certainly going to make the attempt. “Take me through it. How did you crack the spider open?” 

Peter stayed silent, his grip on the table tight enough to make Tony’s hands ache in sympathy.

“Hey,” Tony said, softly, “look at me.” 

The kid’s stare didn’t budge from those five lines. From a threat delivered in nursery rhyme.

“Peter.” Tony hesitated, but he figured at the end of the day, Peter probably wouldn’t refuse his calls for resting a hand on his back. “We’re going to figure—”

“They could get to May.” Never again, Tony promised himself, when Peter turned to him, never again would he let that kind of impotent fear wipe out the light in Peter’s eyes. “They could hurt her if—”

“No, absolutely not.” Tony slid his hand up to Peter’s nape. Rubbing reassurance into the pulse pounding beneath his thumb, he waited until Peter’s focus sharpened, grounded by that point of contact. “Listen to me, Peter. Whoever did this would have to get through you, right, before they got so much as a look at May. And if you think I’d let someone get _that_ far, you don’t know me as well as you assume you do, which is both an excruciatingly disappointing possibility, and something we’ll have to work on if we’re going to—” 

Tony snapped his mouth shut. It was the wrong move, the worst move, he realized, when Peter’s dilated gaze lowered to his lips. 

“If we’re going to what?” 

Releasing his hold-when had his fingers sought sanctuary in Peter’s hair?-he took a step back. 

“My vote is for nailing the son of a bitch with the unfortunate hard-on for Mother Goose to a wall,” Tony said, walking away, because it was that or move into the scant space between him and Peter and—”I assume you want in?”

Peter’s eyes were closed when Tony looked back. The kid had swayed forward onto his toes like he’d meant to cling to the air they had shared, and, sure, Tony could have formulated some bullshit argument about unconscious gestures, the invalidity thereof, but he wasn’t in the business of wasting effort. He was undone, thoroughly, and exquisitely aware of that fact.

“Peter—”

“I want in.” Peter’s eyes were wide open, determined. “On all of it. We’re going to do this.”

“Just to be clear,” Tony said, retracing his steps, trash bags trailing ridiculously from his back pocket, “we’re talking about the wall thing, right? The nailing thing, and, my god, what am I saying? Help me out here, Peter. Tell me about the spider,” he gestured to the nearby sheets of paper, deliberately ignoring the repetition of Peter’s name, “how did you get it open?”

With a grin that could refer to any one of several things, Peter said, “Open sesame.”

Tony searched for the joke. “You’re not kidding.”

Peter shook his head. “There was a lot of noise,” he explained, “and this burning pain before the spider—”

“Wait,” Tony said, “go back. Pain?”

“Yeah, nothing I couldn’t handle, obviously. And then the spider just kind of...popped open, I guess.”

“And yours opening triggered the rest,” Tony concluded. “How did you eliminate it being tech?”

Peter unzipped his backpack. He pulled out a book, and said, “Because of this.”

“And this would be, what?”

“It was in a box of stuff from when I was a kid, only it’s not mine.” Peter held it open, skimmed through the pages to show off the illustrations. “It’s about a little girl who’s a witch.”

Tony took the book and thumbed through to the end, craving milk and cookies around the same time Dorrie showed up on the page with a tray bearing the same. “This is what it’s come to? The bad guys are planting clues now?”

“The thing is, the ones I’ve been fighting lately? All muscle,” Peter said, “not a library card in sight.”

“The delivery angle was a bust, too.” 

After Tony had gone over the scan, the receipt, all of it, Happy had taken one look at his face and made himself scarce. And while Tony had been rescuing kittens from trees longer than Peter had been giving out directions for churros, he’d only had personal dealings with one truly magical being, and Thor would have followed if his brother had been in town.

“I’ll make some more calls, but in the meantime, take this,” Tony said, handing over a trash bag. “Start shoveling. If we’re here all night, that’s one more crime to add to the bastard’s rap sheet.”

Twenty minutes slipped by in silence, or what passed for silence with so much paper shuffling around like every deck in Vegas was in play, before Peter said, “Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“What were you going to say? Before?”

Tony tossed a handful of sheets in the bag, then said, “Now might not be the best time to—”

“I know,” Peter acknowledged. “But tomorrow won’t be any better. Or the day after that.”

“That’s what you’re doing now? Making sense?” 

“Please.”

Tony did the only thing he could do hearing that catch in Peter’s voice: He turned around. 

A light to put Polaris to shame burned through the dark of Peter’s eyes. He’d clenched his hands, and Tony would be a liar if he claimed to know nothing of that feeling, nothing about holding back. It was the sense that Peter had been waiting, that he wouldn’t give it up, that tipped the scale.

Two steps closed the distance. Tony lifted a hand to Peter’s face; his heart went quiet when Peter leaned into the touch. Still— “If I’m crossing wires—”

Peter brushed his lips against Tony’s. Softly, not unlike a question, or hope, or—Tugging Peter in, holding him closer, Tony returned the kiss.

It was a distant thought, that Tony hadn’t stepped inside a church since forever and he still knew, unequivocally, that everything about what was happening was warm as the collection of lit candles behind the chancel. That there was a certain reverence in every glance of tongue, scrape of teeth, in the hush of each shared breath.

It might as well have been a confession, and if for no other reason than that, it had to stop.

“Peter,” Tony tried, and god knows he didn’t mean to sound so obviously exposed, to reveal how wholly he’d been bitten by a need he wasn’t entirely in control of, “we should…this has to slow down.”

“Slow down,” Peter breathed, his finger trembling, slightly, in the hollow of Tony’s clavicle. He drew the tip of that finger down, left of center, to hook in a belt loop. “Not stop.”

“Maybe stop,” Tony said, but when Peter tensed, his jaw tightening impossibly, relented with, “for right now.” He leaned back, met Peter’s eyes, and played the angle he was most likely to regret at two in the morning. “For me?”

Peter quietly sighed. “That’s not fair.”

“I know.” Tony pushed back the dark strands of hair that had fallen over Peter’s forehead. “I’m sorry.”

“Can you at least tell me why?” Peter looked at Tony through his lashes. “Was it--Did you not like it, or—”

“I did. I did, more than I—” Tony was holding onto his resolve like the fraying thread it was, but that didn’t stop him from snagging Peter’s hand, from meeting each of Peter’s knuckles with his lips. He branded Peter’s palm with a brief kiss, closing long fingers over that sacred space. “I can’t tell you why, Peter. That’s the problem. Part of it.”

“If you need to figure it out, okay,” Peter said, and Tony had to give him credit for keeping the hesitance to a minimum, “I can respect that. Just...don’t leave me out of it. Talk to me.” He smiled, and though Tony tried for all of a minute, he couldn’t recall another instance of his brain registering sheepish as sexy. “Touch me. I’ll keep my hands to myself, though, if that’s what you really want.” Peter lifted his chin. “Is it?”

As he was neither blind nor without tricks of his own, Tony didn’t miss the tiniest measure of calculation deepening Peter’s voice, fueling the heat in his eyes.

“Unbelievable,” he said, lightly. “Despite the noblest of intentions, I’ve still managed to rub off on you.”

“Not yet, but soon,” Peter returned, and because he was still Peter, sweet and earnest, his skin flushed with a new set of watercolors, “I hope.”

“Peter Parker, do you kiss your aunt with that innuendo-filled mouth?”

“Just you,” Peter said, leaning in, stealing another quick kiss. “Only you.”

The idea of Peter’s mouth being his, solely, was—Tony put the tidal wave of that thought aside, honing in on the oddity of Peter returning to his abandoned trash bag, to the paper still strewn about, as though the intimacy of the previous moments hadn’t been of the more intense variety. 

Tony arched an eyebrow.

Peter nodded towards the door.

“Hey, boss,” Happy said, seconds later, breezing into the lab, “you need anything? More trash bags? An excavator?”

“Now that you mention it, you could pitch in. That would be a nice change of pace.”

“No can do,” Happy held up both hands, “fresh manicure.”

Peter coughed to cover a laugh.

“What did I do to deserve this? Do not,” Tony spit out, when Happy opened his mouth, “answer that. Not if you would like to stay on the payroll.”

“That hurts, sir. You know I would never dream of enumerating the very long list of possibilities.” And there was that grin again, an obnoxiously high number of teeth on display. “If Parker can spare your assistance with the clean up, you’ve got a visitor.”

“I’m not sure he can. Pretty sure he can’t, in fact.” Tony turned to find Peter bent over the arm of the sofa. “On the off chance there’s someone up there listening,” he muttered, “some strength, please.” Then, louder, “Peter, kindly inform Happy—”

Peter held up an empty bag, smiling. “No worries, I’ve got this.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest and admit that this will probably only be updated if there's interest. If you'd like to read more, please consider leaving a comment (and kudos are always welcome!). Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Title borrowed from RKCB's "Enough"


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